Factory Girl

Sienna Miller embodies Edie Sedgwick with a thoroughly convincing performance that is a highwire act of emotional and physical alchemy to match Guy Pierce's pitch-perfect incarnation of Andy Warhol in director George Hickenlooper's perfunctory biopic about the brief heir to '60s supermodel Twiggy. The story of Edie's quick rise to fame through her association with Warhol, and her equally rapid burnout due to drugs, is told through expository flashbacks that Edie provides to a psychiatrist near the end of her life (she died of a drug overdose at the age of 28). In spite of Miller and Pierce's persuasive performances, the movie is a piecemeal parade of disjointed set pieces that outline in broad terms the life of an incest survivor repeatedly sent to mental hospitals by her blueblood father. Hayden Christensen gives a ludicrous performance as a Bob Dylan caricature, and there is no mention of "Caio Manhattan," the vaguely autobiographical film responsible for much of Edie's lasting fame.
Rated R. 87 mins. (C) (Two Stars)